Art, Antiques, and Collections: Year In Review 1998

Overview

The cautionary attitude that had prevailed among collectors and businesses since 1990, when a five-year boom in the art market ended abruptly, was reversed in 1998. Buyers were paying extraordinary prices for superior works of art when they were available. No major private collections were offered for sale, a factor that encouraged new business strategies among auction houses, including mergers and a revamping of the way they did business; Christie’s, for example, reorganized its auction categories for 19th- and 20th-century artworks.

In an effort to become more global, several auction houses merged. Sotheby’s formed a partnership with Leslie Hindman Auctioneers, Chicago (now Sotheby’s Midwest); French retail magnate and art collector François Pinault bought a controlling interest in Christie’s and privatized the firm; and Bonhams of London and William Doyle Galleries in New York City united in order to hold joint sales in those cities.

Blockbuster exhibitions showcasing the works of Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, and Jean Renoir deserved much of the credit for healthy attendance at shows. A survey conducted in 1997 by the National Endowment for the Arts found that during a 12-month period half of the United States’ adult population--an increase of some 9% since 1992--had participated in at least one of seven arts activities, including musical performances, theatre productions, and museum exhibitions, which were the most popular.

A new international appreciation for Australian Aboriginal art resulted in high prices at an auction; some of the works brought as much as $A200,000 (U.S. $120,000) in June. The first North Asian Biennial was mounted in Taiwan at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum. The exhibit included works by artists from Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and China and represented a reexamination of tradition and national identity.

An increase in prices for Latin-American art created a brisk market for forgeries, especially paintings by such Cuban masters as Mario Carreño, René Portocarrero, Victor Manuel, Mariano Rodríguez, and Estebán Chartrand. Copies of the paintings of Colombian artist Fernando Botero were also reportedly being turned out en masse in Asia by craftsmen working from photographs. As a result of a rash of forgeries, the works of Argentine artist Antonio Berni were being scrutinized by a newly established authentication committee. In another felonious act a rare book by Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus was stolen in Kiev by a brazen thief at the Vernadsky Central Scientific Library of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. With a copy of the 1543 On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres discreetly tucked away, the culprit walked out of the library on the pretense of smoking a cigarette. British author William Boyd, with the help of his publisher, rock star David Bowie, perpetrated a literary hoax with the publication of a memoir of Nat Tate, who reportedly had been prone to depression and burned most of his paintings before jumping to his death from the Staten Island ferry. It was later revealed, however, following a New York City reception at which many in the art world claimed to have known him (but not very well), that Nat Tate: An American Artist was a work of fiction.

Painting and Sculpture

During 1998 artistic practices and critical attention seemed to be divided between painting on one hand and photography, video, and installation work on the other. In New York City numerous galleries opened, and already-established names relocated from Soho to Chelsea to take advantage of the many large industrial spaces that could often easily accommodate large-scale installation work, such as that of Brazilian artist Tunga, who showed one of his characteristically complex pieces, "True Rouge," at Luhring Augustine Gallery. Installation art also became popular at international venues. German artist Thomas Hirschhorn filled the Kunstmuseum Bern with an array of glitter-covered objects, and Jason Rhoades--whose artfully cluttered and seemingly dangerous installations (comprising such objects as tables, chairs, electrical cords, and computers)--had a show at the Kunsthalle Nürnburg.

British artist Rachel Whiteread created a unique outdoor project for New York City’s non-profit Public Art Fund. She cast a water tower from clear resin that was set atop a building in Soho, where rooftops were rather ubiquitously dotted with those structures. Some artists went beyond the mere casting or recasting of objects, creating pieces that commented on spatial relations or the environment inhabited by the viewer. Canadian Scott Lyall exhibited "Washington Square," a work composed of stacked plywood, fur, and polystyrene that was at once installation, sculpture, and monument while also resembling Modernist furniture. British artist Cornelia Parker made her New York solo debut with an installation of "Mass," a conceptual sculptural work made from the charred, strung-together remains of a church that had been struck by lightning. The use of destroyed objects was also seen elsewhere, particularly in the recurring motif of the smashed or burned automobile. Sylvie Fleury showed smashed and enamel-coated cars, and Sarah Lucas’s two burned autos (their interiors were also covered with cigarettes) were on view at Barbara Gladstone gallery in New York City. Los Angeles-based artist Charles Ray’s life-size fibreglass version of a totaled Pontiac was included in the major traveling exhibition of his work.

The art world showed interest and quickly applied labels to two new approaches to painting; British artist Martin Maloney’s Expressionistic figurative style was dubbed "new neurotic realism," and the so-called new colour field painting of Monique Prieto, Kevin Apell, and Ingrid Calame appeared in many galleries and in several art magazine spreads.

Painting was conspicuously absent from the works of those nominated for the 1998 Hugo Prize. Pippiloti Rist of Switzerland produced pop-culture infused videos; Huang Yong Ping of China created ambitious installations; William Kentridge of South Africa was an actor, director, and theatre designer as well as an animated filmmaker; Bul Lee of South Korea did work that was largely performance based; and Lorna Simpson of the U.S. made photo- and text-based installations. The recipient of the prize, Scottish artist Douglas Gordon, specialized in video projections and conceptual text pieces.

Art Exhibitions

During 1998 long-awaited blockbuster shows were mounted of two important American painters from the 1950s: Abstract Expressionists Jackson Pollock (1912-56) and Mark Rothko (1903-70). In November the first retrospective devoted to the work of Pollock since 1967 was presented at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York City. This show of 106 paintings, 49 works on paper, and 3 sculptures reconsidered the work and legacy of one of the most explosive and influential figures in modern art. On view were some of his best-known paintings, including "One: Number 31, 1950," the rarely exhibited "Mural" (1943), and "Autumn Rhythm: Number 30, 1950." The exhibit was one of the most highly anticipated New York City events of the fall season. When Pollock first emerged on the scene in 1947, however, he had been largely denounced by the public and dubbed "Jack the Dripper" because of his technique of pouring, splattering, and dripping paint on canvas. The Tate Gallery in London planned to serve as host of the show in the spring of 1999. From May to August the work of Rothko was featured at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Many of the 115 works shown were from the museum’s own extensive collection and traced Rothko’s development from early figuration to his distinctive, purely abstract paintings of ethereal floating bands of colour. The show was scheduled to travel to the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City in September before moving to the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris at the end of the year.

The National Gallery of Art also mounted a major retrospective honouring the centenary of the birth of sculptor Alexander Calder (1898-1976), an innovator whose huge metal sculptures adorned corporate plazas in the U.S. during the 1960s and whose smaller sculptures (also called mobiles) featured thin wires that allowed movement in the pieces. In March more than 250 of his signature kinetic works fashioned from brightly coloured shapes, as well as supplemental works on paper and some paintings, went on view in both the interior and exterior spaces of the museum; included were some early pieces that had not been previously exhibited. In September the show went to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Although the works of African-American artist Norman Lewis (1909-79) were closely associated with the Abstract Expressionist movement, his contributions had often been overlooked. In April, however, the Studio Museum in Harlem in New York City opened an exhibition focusing on Lewis’s "Black" paintings--displaying 65 works in all. The show was scheduled to travel nationally after its New York debut.

There were several significant museum exhibitions of the work of women artists in 1998. Two different shows of the work of British photographer Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-79) were mounted at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) in March and the Art Institute of Chicago in September. Cameron, one of the most renowned portrait photographers of the Victorian era, turned to photography at the age of 48 after her daughter presented her with a camera as a gift. About 85 of Cameron’s Pre-Raphaelite-inspired images were on view at the MFA, including portraits of her family and friends and such famous literary and intellectual figures of the day as Robert Browning, Charles Darwin, and Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Most of the nearly 2,000 existing prints by Cameron were portraits of women. The Art Institute’s exhibition concentrated specifically on these images, aiming to reveal the identity of her female subjects as well as to provide new insights into Cameron herself. The Chicago exhibition was scheduled to travel in 1999 to the MOMA and San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art.

In October the Art Institute of Chicago opened a show dedicated to the work of 19th-century American expatriate artist Mary Cassatt (1844-1926), a painter and printmaker. The exhibit, which showcased nearly 100 works, including paintings, prints, and pastels, was the first major consideration of Cassatt’s work in nearly 30 years. She was a close associate of such French artists as Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, and, particularly, Edgar Degas and the only American included in the Impressionist exhibitions in Paris. The curatorial objective, however, was to position Cassatt as a modern painter in her own right. The MFA and the National Gallery of Art in Washington planned to exhibit the work in 1999.

The first full-scale consideration of the work of San Francisco Bay Area artist Joan Brown opened in September at two venues in California: the Berkeley Art Museum and the Oakland Museum of California. The show included 126 works by Brown, known for her uniquely personal figurative style. Recognition of her talent came in the late 1950s, a particularly rich period of artistic activity in San Francisco that also saw the rise of the West Coast school of Abstraction and the Beat culture. Brown’s significance for feminist art of the ’70s and her importance as a major California artist were highlighted.

Several shows of Asian art opened during the year. In New York City the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum staged "China: 5,000 Years." Organized in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture of China, this ambitious exhibition was the first attempt to bring together traditional artifacts and modern works from that nation. Hundreds of objects were shown, ranging from religious artifacts and examples from archaeological discoveries to the politically charged Socialist Realist paintings of the 1950s. Included were works in jade, porcelain, stone, and bronze, as well as landscape paintings, tapestries, calligraphy, and lacquerware. Works in these traditional media occupied the museum’s uptown space, whereas the modern section was on display in the Guggenheim’s larger downtown galleries. The focus there was on key developments in Chinese art from 1850 onward, particularly in woodcuts and painting. Although a section had been planned that would have considered work dating from 1965 to the present, the museum cited inadequate space and stated that the contemporary part of the exhibition would occur at a future date. The last-minute decision to eliminate this section set off a debate about the Chinese government’s influence over the museum. Another exhibition of contemporary Chinese art, "Inside Out," was a welcome addition to the New York fall season. Critically successful and ambitious, the two-venue (P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center and the Asia Society) show included 80 works by more than 60 artists from Hong Kong, mainland China, and Taiwan in a range of media, including paintings in inks and oils, video, and installations.

The Kurtzman family collection of Japanese Hirado porcelains was seen at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in the spring. It was the first exhibition to showcase a range of pieces (85 were on display), including many from the "golden age" of Hirado (1751-1843). The entire Kurtzman collection of more than 240 porcelains was a promised gift to the museum and would enhance its celebrated holdings of Japanese art.

Another object-oriented show debuted at the Yale University Art Gallery in late 1997. "Baule: African Art/Western Eyes" was an exhibition of artifacts and objects made by the Baule artists of Côte d’Ivoire and was the first exhibition to concentrate on the significance of Baule art. The exhibit showcased over 125 examples taken from private collections worldwide and included sculptures, masks, and other objects rendered in gold, wood, ivory, and bronze. This important show was scheduled to travel to Chicago, New York City, and Washington, D.C., through 1999.

The Tate Gallery’s exhibition of French painter Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947) was one of the most popular of the year. After its London debut, the show traveled to the MOMA for the summer. The large crowds drawn to the show at both venues were testimony to the popular appeal of Bonnard’s Impressionist legacy, evident in his bold use of colour, loose brushwork, and choice of subject matter: landscapes, gardens, still lifes, and warm interiors. Though Bonnard was known primarily as a colourist, the inclusion of his famous paintings of his wife, Marthe, in her bath provided an opportunity to consider his status as an important figurative artist in the context of his entire oeuvre. These important later nudes were considered the culmination of his career. The MOMA show was the first survey of Bonnard’s work in New York in three decades.

Several exhibitions were devoted to 17th-century Dutch art. In September the Dulwich Picture Gallery, the United Kingdom’s oldest purpose-built public art gallery, showed the work of painter Pieter de Hooch (1629-81). In December the show traveled to the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Conn.--the oldest free public art museum in the U.S. This first major exhibition of de Hooch featured 40 works drawn from museums and private collections. A contemporary of Jan Vermeer in Delft, Neth., although his stay there was brief, de Hooch remained best known for similarly intimate genre scenes depicting interiors and light-infused landscapes.

"Masters of Light: Dutch Painters in Utrecht During the Golden Age" featured 79 masterpieces that included landscapes, still lifes, and religious subjects by such 17th-century artists as Gerrit van Honthorst (1590-1656), Hendrik Terbrugghen (1588-1629), and Joachim Wtewael (1566-1638), who were influenced by the styles of Italian Mannerism and particularly by Caravaggio. "Masters of Light" ìopened in late 1997 at the Legion of Honor museum in San Francisco and traveled to the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore, Md., in January 1998 before moving in May to the National Gallery in London.

In Germany the Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf offered a retrospective of more than 90 works by Angelica Kauffmann (1741-1807), an artist and personality in 18th-century Rome. Kauffmann was an accomplished historical painter and portraitist, her style embodying a fusion of the Neoclassical and the Rococo. Despite her significance as a historical and cultural figure--she was considered the most cultured woman of her time--Kauffmann had never been the subject of a large-scale exhibition.

On the occasion of French artist Eugène Delacroix’s bicentennial birthday in April, the Grand Palais in Paris mounted an exhibition of the artist’s late work. More than 70 paintings and works on paper were featured and were drawn from international collections, including works from his Moroccan journey and several paintings focusing on the subject of Christ on the Sea of Galilee, a theme that became something of a metaphor for the artist; these later works revealed a spiritual intensity not always evident in Delacroix’s large public commissions. In September the show traveled to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, its only U.S. venue.

"Monet in the 20th Century," organized by the MFA, brought together some 80 works by the French Impressionist for a comprehensive exhibition of his most important later works, including examples from the London series and the "Water Lily" paintings from 1903-08 and other works completed in the artist’s gardens at Giverny. Co-organized by the Royal Academy of Arts, London, the show was to travel there in January 1999 after its September-December run in Boston.

The Guggenheim Museum captured New York’s attention during the summer with its blockbuster "The Art of the Motorcycle." Enthusiasts and ordinary museum patrons flocked to see over 100 motorcycles (from 1868 to the present) parked in Frank Lloyd Wright’s rotunda, which was transformed by blue neon, industrial steel, and rubber and wooden ramps designed by architect Frank Gehry. Among the technically innovative examples on view were an eight-valve Harley-Davidson from 1911 and an Aprilia Motò 6.5 designed by Phillipe Starck. The exhibit opened on November 7 at the Field Museum in Chicago and was to travel to the Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain, in 1999.

Work by several important contemporary artists was showcased at a variety of international venues. London’s Hayward Gallery offered the first U.K. show of recent and new work by Indian-born sculptor Anish Kapoor. Known for his large-scale sculptures in stone, steel, and pigment, Kapoor often utilized the very spaces of the gallery to make works; the Hayward was no exception. The artist carved his "voids" directly into its walls and floors, creating negative spaces that were intended to invoke the spiritual and the sublime. The photographs of Japanese artist Yasumasa Morimura (see BIOGRAPHIES) were shown from April to June at Tokyo’s Museum of Contemporary Art. The exhibition highlighted photographs from the "Art History" series, for which Morimura made unnerving realistic self-portraits of various figures from iconic Western paintings (e.g., the "Mona Lisa" and Édouard Manet’s "Fifer"). The show would travel only within Japan. "An Unrestricted View of the Mediterranean," a group show organized by Parkett editor Bice Curiger at the Kunsthaus Zürich, featured 200 works by young Swiss artists, some well known (Pilpilotti Rist and Thomas Hirschhorn) and others more local (Fabrice Gygi). "Unrestricted" would travel later in the year to Frankfurt, Ger.

Stockholm was chosen as the Cultural Capital of Europe in 1998, an honour that had been bestowed upon one city each year since 1985. Among many cultural events offered in the Swedish capital was the opening of the newly renovated Moderna Museet in February. This new space was the venue for a subject new to Swedish museums--Joan Miró (1893-1983). The exhibition, subtitled "Creator of New Worlds," focused mainly on the Catalan artist’s production from the ’20s and his introduction to Pablo Picasso and the Surrealists in Paris. Among the 150 works on view from this period up until about 1950 were several well-known canvases, including "Landscape (The Hare)" (1927) and "The Tilled Field" (1923-24). The show would move in the fall to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art near Copenhagen, Den.

The artist Marina Abramovic was the subject of an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, Australia. This survey examined her earlier sound and performance pieces as well as more recent installation work and object-oriented pieces. In October in Canberra the National Gallery of Australia presented "Re-take," a show of contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander photography highlighting the fascinating images taken by people who for so long had had the camera aimed at them.

The critically acclaimed "Out of Actions: Between Performance and the Object" opened in February at the Geffen Contemporary at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, its only U.S. venue. Focusing on the dialogue between visual art and performance, "Out of Actions" featured works dating from 1949 to 1979 by artists and collaborative efforts from 20 countries, including the Viennese Actionists, Japan’s Gutai Group, and Fluxus; individual artists shown included Lygia Clark, Otto Mühl, John Cage, Jim Dine, Adrian Piper, and Carolee Schneemann. Works in a variety of media were on view, including paintings by Robert Rauschenberg and Yves Klein, re-creations of famous installations such as Claes Oldenberg’s "The Store" (1961-62) and Allan Kaprow’s "Yard" (1961), and photographs, videos, and films documenting various performances or actions. The exhibition would continue its international tour in 1999 to Vienna; Barcelona, Spain; and Tokyo.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Photography’s continuing enterprise of rediscovering its past and reinventing itself in the present produced a stimulating variety of exhibitions in 1998, and photographic galleries and auctions achieved record sales as they surfed the peak of a booming economy.

Two exhibitions in New York City explored the complex relationship between art and photography in the vision of two masters of both. At the Museum of Modern Art, "Aleksandr Rodchenko" for the first time provided an integrated view of this diverse artist’s Constructivist work in painting, sculpture, and collage as well as his experimental, documentary, and propagandistic photography. "Edgar Degas, Photographer" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art delved into a lesser-known but brilliant aspect of this painter’s creative vision. Degas made most of the exhibited photographs in 1895 during a brief but intense engagement with photography. The 40 rare images included portraits and figure studies recorded by the light of oil lamps and reflectors in Degas’s studio.

Walker Evans, although best known for his Depression-era photographs of the rural American South, also produced less-familiar but powerful work recording New York City. The Getty Museum in Los Angeles selected some 100 of the urban images for its "Walker Evans: New York" exhibition. The show gave a richly diverse portrait of the city from 1927 to 1963, including some early large-camera work but mostly emphasizing Evans’s later, dynamic street photographs taken with a small camera. In "A Practical Dreamer: The Photographs of Man Ray," the Getty exhibited more than 100 of the artist’s works from its collection, including experimental photographs associated with the Dada and Surrealist movements and his cameraless photograms, which he called rayographs.

New York’s Serge Sorokko Gallery exhibited examples of photographer-designer Marco Glaviano’s giant Cubist-style images, which merged traditional photographic techniques with advanced digital imaging. Starting with a 35-mm camera and Ektachrome film, Glaviano generated as many 70 layers on his computer to create the finished image, which was outputted onto four 76 ° 112-cm (30 × 44-in) panels--obviously not for a cozy cabin.

Some of the first photographs to record an important American historical event were exhibited in "Silver and Gold: Cased Images of the California Gold Rush" at the Oakland Museum of California. Included were some 150 daguerreotypes and ambrotypes made from 1848 to 1860, the earliest less than 10 years after Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre went public with his photography process. Although limited by technical necessity mostly to posed portraits and groups, they brought solace to lonely miners and the families that they had left behind and prefigured a revolution in visual reportage.

Photographic auction houses achieved record sales--more than $10 million for New York City’s four major participants alone during their annual spring auctions. Prices paid for works by several photographers also broke auction records, including $226,500 for Edward Weston’s "Circus Tent" at Sotheby’s and $211,500 for Imogen Cunningham’s "Magnolia Blossom" at Swann’s.

A potential rival to established methods for merchandising art photographs emerged with Photography Auction’s first on-line art-photography auction, held in May. Collectors could view works by Weston, Ray, Roman Vishniac, Alfred Stieglitz, and others over the Internet or by appointment at a gallery in New York City. Electronic bidding took place during an on-line "virtual auction," ringing up more than $100,000 in sales--enough to encourage a repeat of the event and give conventional auction houses something to ponder.

Notable photographers who died during the year included Ilse Bing, who recorded Paris during the 1930s in a distinctive, abstract style that made her known as "queen of the Leica" among the avant-garde, and Otto L. Bettmann, who fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s with two trunks filled with photographs and founded what became the multimillion-image Bettmann Archive of pictorial material. (See OBITUARIES.)

The 1998 Pulitzer Prize for spot news photography was awarded to Martha Rial of the Pittsburgh (Pa.) Post-Gazette for her photographs of survivors of the Hutu and Tutsi massacres in east-central Africa. Clarence Williams of the Los Angeles Times won the Pulitzer for feature photography with his photo-essay on the plight of young children and their drug- and alcohol-addicted parents. At the 55th Annual Pictures of the Year competition, sponsored by the National Press Photographers Association and the University of Missouri School of Journalism, freelancer Eugene Richards was named Magazine Photographer of the Year and also received the Canon Photo Essayist Award. The contest’s Newspaper Photographer of the Year award went to Nancy Andrews of the Washington (D.C.) Post, and Jacques Lowe received the Kodak Crystal Eagle Award for Impact in Photojournalism. At the 41st annual World Press Photo Contest, the World Press Photo of the Year award went to Algerian photographer Hocine of Agence France-Presse for his image of an Algerian woman grieving over her massacred children. The W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography was given to photojournalist Ernesto Bazan for "El periodo especial in Cuba," documenting the human condition in contemporary Cuba, and Lori Grinker received a fellowship grant for "After War: Veterans from a World of Conflict." The 1998 Howard Chapnick Grant for Leadership in Photojournalism was given to Shahidul Alam for his project of furthering photojournalism in South Asia. Winner of the 1998 Ernst Haas Award, presented at the Maine Photographic Workshops Golden Light Awards, was Dean Tokuno for his series of photographs of his dying father.

Art Auctions and Sales

Building on renewed confidence in the art market, the 1998 auction market showed increased strength, and high prices were realized for works of exceptional quality. Both Sotheby’s and Christie’s auctions, driven by strength in the American and European sectors, experienced growth in the top and middle markets of the business. Despite turmoil in the worldwide stock markets, there were many new buyers; however, support from the Asian sector declined dramatically. Much of the growth could be attributed to strong sales of American, Old Master, Contemporary, Impressionist, and Modern paintings, drawings, and sculptures. In an interesting development French businessman François Pinault purchased Christie’s and took the firm into the private sector.

In January Sotheby’s posted phenomenal results of $53.3 million from the New York City sale of Old Master paintings, an auction record for this category. Twelve paintings sold for more than $1 million, and 12 individual artists’ records were established. Among the highlights were Rembrandt’s "Portrait of a Bearded Man in a Red Coat," selling for $9.1 million, and Rubens’s "Head of John the Baptist Presented to Salome," which fetched $5.5 million. At the Old Master drawings sale in January, a record was set for Michelangelo’s "Christ and the Woman of Samaria," which went to an anonymous buyer for $7.5 million. Christie’s enjoyed similar success in New York at its January Old Master paintings sale, which totaled $21.7 million and set auction records for six of the represented artists. The high point of the sale was Francisco de Zurbarán’s "Saint Dorothea," which brought $2,092,500. In January Christie’s New York sale of Old Master drawings realized $3.8 million, a record for that category.

American paintings, building on the momentum of 1997, enjoyed a healthy season at both auction houses. Christie’s sale brought $42.4 million, the second highest total ever achieved for this category. Many of the top sellers came from the private collection of Thomas Mellon Evans, including Childe Hassam’s "Flags, Afternoon on the Avenue," which commanded $7,922,500, a record for the artist. At Sotheby’s New York the American paintings sale earned $42.3 million, the highest sale total for that category. Of particular note was Georgia O’Keeffe’s "Calla Lily with Red Roses," which fetched $2.6 million, a record for one of her floral works. The Sotheby’s auction was distinguished by the John F. Eulich Collection of Western art, which brought $25 million, a record for any single-owner collection of American works.

Contemporary art continued to be a strong contender across the board. Sotheby’s May sale in New York totaled $42.3 million, the highest price for Contemporary works since 1990. The star was Andy Warhol’s "Orange Marilyn," which went for a record $17.3 million. Lucian Freud’s "Large Interior W11" realized a record $5.8 million. Christie’s New York sale in June earned $16.2 million, with the Barbara Herbig single-owner collection from Germany reaching nearly $12 million.

The resoundingly successful November sales of Contemporary art exemplified the health of that market--the sale at Sotheby’s totaled $32.9 million. A standout from the Reader’s Digest corporate collection was Richard Diebenkorn’s "Horizon--Ocean View," which fetched $3.9 million. November sales at Christie’s totaled $9,297,350, and the star was Jean-Michel Basquiat’s "Self-Portrait," which sold for $3,302,500, a record for the artist.

The strongest sales were found in Impressionist and Modern works of art, which brought extraordinary prices for exceptional works that were fresh to the market and carried a solid provenance. At Sotheby’s May sale in New York, sales totaled $108 million, and the majority of purchases were made by private buyers. Claude Monet’s "Le Grand Canal" was the top seller, fetching $12.1 million. Sotheby’s June sale in London totaled $76.6 million, and Monet’s "Bassin aux nymphéas et sentier au bord de l’eau" brought $33 million, the highest price for any work sold in Europe since 1990. At Christie’s New York Impressionist highlights included another Monet, "Waterloo Bridge, brouillard," which went for $5,282,500, and an important work by Vincent van Gogh, "Bâteaux de pêches sur la plage à Saintes-Maries de la Mer, Mediterranée," which sold for $5,062,500. The most distinguished collection of 1998 was from the Reader’s Digest Collection and was offered at Sotheby’s in November. The sale of $86.6 million was the third largest single-owner paintings sale, behind the John C. Dorrance Collection and the Victor and Sally Ganz Collection. The centrepiece of the Reader’s Digest sale was a work of Amedeo Modigliani’s mistress and later wife, "Portrait de Jeanne Hébuterne," which set a record for the artist at $15.1 million. Another Modigliani, also of Jeanne Hébuterne, went for $9.9 million. Paul Cézanne’s "L’Estaque vu a travers les pins" sold for $11 million, and Monet’s "Le Bassin aux nympheas" fetched $9.9 million. In another single-owner sale, Picasso’s "Femme nue," from the collection of Morton G. Neumann, brought $11 million. In November at Christie’s New York, van Gogh’s "Portrait de l’artiste sans barbe" commanded $71 million.

The jewelry divisions also experienced robust sales. In April Christie’s New York sold a brooch from the collection of Eva Perón for $992,500 at a sale that totaled $34.1 million. In Geneva Christie’s hammered a blue heart-shaped 11.25-carat diamond for $1,423,600. The April sale at Sotheby’s New York brought $17.1 million; a pair of diamond-pendant ear clips went for $1 million. The single-owner collection of jewels from the estate of Betsey Cushing Whitney was offered at Sotheby’s in October and earned $11.8 million.

Decorative works of art continued to garner great prices for quality pieces. In January at Sotheby’s the series of Americana sales totaled a record $25.8 million. An 18th-century Chippendale high chest and companion dressing table from the estate of Stanley Paul Sax sold for $1.2 million, the second highest price ever paid for American furniture. In its Americana series Christie’s offered the Hollingsworth family suite of Chippendale furniture, which sold for $2,972,500, the highest price ever paid for Philadelphia furniture.

At the February nine-day sale of the collection of the duke and duchess of Windsor, 31,000 sale catalogues were sold; 44,000 objects were offered in 2,987 lots; and sales totaled $23.4 million. A painting by Sir Alfred Munnings, "H.R.H. the Prince of Wales on ’Forest Witch,’ " fetched $2.3 million, the highest amount at the sale. The desk on which King Edward signed the instrument of abdication from the throne in 1936 sold for $415,000.

Antiquarian Books

A strong market for fine antiquarian books marked the 1997-98 season. The rapid rise of commerce on the Internet resulted in the publication of on-line book catalogs and a number of sales. In New York City, Sotheby’s held its first on-line auction, selling a variety of books and manuscripts, notably from the Donald Stralem collection.

Important, rare, and beautiful books in a wide range of subjects fetched huge prices in a very competitive international arena. Science, medical, travel, and colour-plate books all performed especially well, as did atlases and exceptional illuminated manuscripts.

The library of the duke and duchess of Windsor, which included over 600 lots of books, manuscripts, and related items, sold at Sotheby’s New York for the astonishing price of $2.3 million. Winston Churchill’s World Crisis, inscribed to the prince of Wales, fetched $145,500, and John F. Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage, inscribed to both the duke and the duchess, made over $39,000.

In single-owner sales Christie’s began its season with the Giannalisa Feltrinelli Library of Italian Books. The large library (over 1,800 lots) was dispersed over the year in sales at five venues. The highlight of the sales was a copy of Francesco Colonna’s Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (1499, Venice)--with provenance dating back to the 17th century--which sold for $220,000. An early humanist illuminated manuscript of Virgil’s Eclogues, Georgics, and Aeneid brought just over $1 million.

Sotheby’s New York sold for just over $2 million the Highly Important Americana from the Stanley Paul Sax Collection, which included 50 lots of books. Major works rising to record levels included George Catlin’s North American Indian Portfolio ($107,000) and Yellowstone National Park ($140,000).

The collection of fine books in exquisite bindings and illuminated manuscripts owned by Jaime Ortiz-Patiño was offered by Sotheby’s New York, and the top performer, at $3.3 million, was the superlative "Hours of St.-Lô," one of the finest recent examples of an illuminated manuscript to come on the market. Guillaume Apollinaire’s Le Bestiaire, a presentation copy to artists Robert and Sonia Delaunay, sold for $220,000. Apollinaire’s rare Case D’Armons, one of 25 copies, sold for $120,000. The magnificent Duchesse de Berry copy of Pierre Joseph Redouté’s Les Roses (1817-24, Paris) brought $400,000.

In July Christie’s London hammered down "the most expensive [printed] book ever sold" at the sale of English incunabula from the Wentworth Library. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, printed in 1476-77 by William Caxton, brought £4.6 million ($7.6 million); the sale--which included seven other major early English printed books, including Caxton’s Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye--yielded almost $10 million.

Philately

Responding to a strong economy, the U.S. postage stamp market continued its modest but steady growth during 1998. In the face of an increasing number of new stamps, the worldwide new issue market remained highly competitive, which led many countries to increase their promotional efforts. The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) earmarked $100 million to promote its three-year "Celebrate the Century" program, in which customers’ opinions were solicited to commemorate 15 of the most important events of the decades from the 1950s to 2000. The first four sheets appeared in 1998. France issued its first round stamp, a highly popular issue to publicize the World Cup of association football (soccer) championships. Great Britain offered chances to win an automobile with the purchase of a stamp booklet.

The United States experimented with reduced production quantities and limited regional distribution of new commemorative stamps, which led to criticism that some historic events were deemed less important cartoon characters, which got national distribution. Under instructions from the U.S. Congress, the USPS issued the first American semipostal stamp with a surcharge to benefit breast cancer research.

The death of Diana, princess of Wales, on Aug. 31, 1997, resulted in new issues from more than 70 countries. Nevis led with a souvenir sheet within a month of her death. The delay in the issue of stamps from Great Britain was due to the concerns about the emotional impact the issuance would have on Diana’s sons. In July New Zealand postal authorities announced that they would not go forward with a planned memorial issue, citing overcommercialization and delay in receiving approval from Diana’s Memorial Trust.

In January Krause Publications produced the first edition of its newly acquired Minkus U.S. stamp catalog. The catalog directly challenged Scott Publishing Co., the leading U.S. catalog publisher, by including Scott’s numbers in a concordance with the Krause numbers. Scott responded with a lawsuit for infringement of copyright and misappropriation of property. By midsummer the highly charged legal battle had given way to private negotiations, with the prospect of settling the dispute in time for the next edition of the Krause-Minkus Catalog.

U.S. Postmaster General Marvin T. Runyon left office in May. The agency’s chief operating officer and a career postal official, William J. Henderson, replaced him. Despite a projected profit of $1 billion, the USPS requested and received a postal rate increase of one cent for a 32-cent stamp effective in 1999.

Self-adhesive stamps continued to grow in popularity. The USPS announced that in 1997 sales of self-adhesives amounted to 81% of U.S. stamp sales. Late in 1997 Belgium issued its first self-adhesive stamp. The British Royal Mail announced additional self-adhesive stamp trials.

A venerable philatelic institution changed hands in April when Stanley Gibbons of London, the oldest and largest stamp dealer in the world, was acquired by a company that sold flowers by mail and was based on the island of Jersey.

New Zealand Post announced in May that it had purchased the only known example of the 4-penny pictorial from its 1903 series, with the centre, an image of Lake Taupo, inverted. The purchase price of $66,500 was a record in Australasia for a single 20th-century stamp. In October the Robert A. Siegel Auction Galleries of New York sold the Robert Zoellner collection of U.S. stamps, the most complete collection of U.S. stamps ever to be offered for sale. One of two known copies of the one-cent blue Benjamin Franklin of 1868 with a Z grill was sold for $935,000, the highest price ever paid for a U.S. stamp. The entire collection brought more than $8 million. During the year the International Federation of Philately sponsored World Stamp Exhibitions in Tel Aviv, Israel; Granada, Spain; Luxembourg; Johannesburg, S.Af.; and Milan.

Numismatics

In September 1998 the U.S. Federal Reserve released new 20-dollar notes that included an off-centre portrait of Andrew Jackson, colour-shifting ink, a watermark, and other anticounterfeiting devices. Like the 50-dollar bills that made their debut in 1997, the new 20s carried an enlarged numeral on the back side to help the sight-impaired. During 1998 government printers were expected to make about 2.2 billion 20-dollar notes, the denomination most often dispensed by automated teller machines. Meanwhile, a U.S. Treasury official told Congress in March that although the government was testing several substitutes for paper, including plastic, there were no current plans to issue plastic notes. Some experts believed that plastic notes would help curtail counterfeiting achieved with personal computers and inkjet printers, a method that accounted for at least one-third of the relatively small number of fake U.S. notes passed into circulation in 1998.

Amid much debate, U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin announced in July that a circulating dollar coin would depict Sacajawea, Lewis and Clark’s Indian guide. Some people said the gold-coloured coin--which was expected to debut in 2000--should portray the Statue of Liberty as a more easily recognized symbol. Rubin, however, accepted the recommendation of an advisory committee, which decided that the dollar should "bear a design of Liberty represented by a Native American woman, inspired by Sacajawea." Meanwhile, several governors reviewed state designs that would appear on the reverse side of circulating U.S. quarters. Under a 10-year program beginning in 1999, five states would be honoured each year in the order that they joined the union. Canadian citizens submitted more than 30,000 drawings for that country’s circulating commemorative coin program of 1999 and 2000. Officials planned to issue 12 special quarter designs each year.

In 1998 the rare-coin market enjoyed perhaps its best showing of the decade. In May an 1845 U.S. proof set in its original case sold at auction for $756,250, and an 1838 10-dollar gold piece, also proof, brought $550,000. Both were part of the John J. Pittman collection. In another auction a series 1928 10,000-dollar Federal Reserve note fetched $126,500, a record price for small-size U.S. paper money. In December an 1890 $1,000 U.S. Treasury note sold at auction for $792,000, believed to be a record for a bank note. Sales of gold bullion coins surged in 1998 as investors appeared to take advantage of a gold price that was below $300 per ounce for much of the year. During the first eight months of 1998, the U.S. Mint sold 942,000 oz of gold bullion coins, more than during all of 1997. The U.S. platinum bullion program, launched in September 1997, generated sales of 153,700 oz of metal in the program’s first 11 months, surpassing the first-year goal of 100,000 oz. The U.K. introduced a one-ounce silver Britannia bullion piece, complementing its gold coin.

Some European nations made their first euro coins or bank notes, the currency of the European economic and monetary union (EMU). Eleven countries were scheduled to adopt the euro on Jan. 1, 1999, and euro-denominated coins and notes were scheduled to replace national currencies in those countries in 2002. Euro coins would have a common design on one side and a motif selected by the nation of issue on the other; euro notes would be uniform throughout EMU countries. In January the U.K. placed a new portrait of Queen Elizabeth II on its coinage, the fourth portrait of the queen to have appeared on circulating coins during her 45-year reign. The British Royal Mint released its first circulating two-pound coin in June. It had a copper-nickel centre, a nickel-brass outer ring, and a latent-image security device on the reverse. In January the central bank of Russia distributed new currency, with one new ruble worth 1,000 old rubles. Israel marked its 50th year of statehood with various commemorative issues, and Canada and Australia each produced special coins featuring more than one colour.

Antiques and Collectibles

Technology was rapidly changing the antiques and collectibles market in 1998. Items that sold well in shops, at shows, and at auctions were finding a niche on the Internet, with auctions there accounting for about 10% of all antiques and collectibles sales. Small items sold quickly, and some dealers reported that they could sell more on the Internet than at a show.

Though major auctions in New York and California attracted media attention, many records were set elsewhere at smaller sales and through mail-order auctions. In specialized sales many pieces sold for record prices; at a magic poster auction, a 1910 three-sheet lithograph poster by Strobridge & Co. of Cincinnati, Ohio, "Thurston, the Great," a magician levitating a woman, fetched $13,800, and at a toy train auction, four record prices were set, including $7,700 for a set of four Lionel-scale freight cars and $5,170 for an American Flyer Empire Express set. At a mechanical bank auction, the Old Woman in the Shoe bank, which commanded $426,000, set a record for any toy or bank. Other banks at that auction selling for over $100,000 included Darkey and Watermelon ($354,500), Freedman’s ($321,500), Preacher in the Pulpit ($233,500), Zig Zag ($189,500), Roller Skating ($156,500), and Mikado ($123,500). At a videophone marble sale, a "Miller Swirl" Golden Rebel marble (c. 1927), with opaque yellow base and aventurine black and opaque red swirls, brought $2,993. At another sale the tall Architettura bureau designed in 1952 by Peiro Fornasetti fetched a record $140,000. At a special sale a head vase depicting Marilyn Monroe sold for $1,100.

Prices for bakelite jewelry remained high. The multicolour Art Deco style Philadelphia bracelet brought a record $17,600; a googly-eyed clown pin with ivory head, collar, and hat went for $7,700; and a pin with cigarette holder and match-shaped charms sold for $10,450. Other costume jewelry also sold at high prices. A Trifari Pearl Belly gilt metal clip shaped like a frog fetched $6,600, and a Boucher animated pelican pin with pull-chain movable mouth brought $5,500. California ceramics of the 1950s remained popular. A 51-cm (20-in) Kay Finch "Life-Size Lamb" made $5,170, and a 43-cm (17-in) Violet, a pink elephant with flowered ears, brought $4,400. Other records included a red-painted tin gooseneck toleware coffeepot (c. 1880) for $33,000 and a Cheyenne lattice cradle for $59,700.

Traditional favourites also sold well. The Pink Lotus Lamp with a bronze and mosaic base set a record for both Tiffany and for a 20th-century object when it commanded $2,807,500 in late 1997. In January a Tiffany Laburnum table lamp made $129,000; a 30-cm (12-in) cire perdue glass vase named "Roses" by René Lalique brought $409,500; and a 1.8-m (6-ft)-high cigar store figure of Corporal Joe (c. 1865) went for $46,750. Unusual collectibles that set records included a 1943 one-sheet movie poster of Casablanca, which sold for $21,850, and a 1793 book, reportedly the first written entirely about golf, for $80,500. A founder’s stock certificate for Standard Oil Co. signed by John D. Rockefeller made $61,000.

Titanic memorabilia also made waves in the market. The enormous popularity of the movie made anything connected with the sunken ship a pricey collectible. Bits of chair caning from the original shipboard chairs fetched $3,000 or more, and small mounted pieces of wood recovered from the ship in 1912 were sold for $750. Costumes and dinnerware made as props for the film also sold for higher-than-expected prices.